Mood: I thought it was you.
Mood: Exactally, but Wendy and Johnny deepen their friendship here.
Happier than Most: Yep, Wendy's smile is just for Johnny, and I'm glad you like the trip to the library, I plan to have more fun with their homework assignments.
lulusgardenfli: Thank you for the wonderful compliments and I must say, your reviews are drool worthly, I love them. I hope you get a kick out of this chapter.
Lovetoread75 : Yes, Great Expectations and Outsiders are very similar, and I think that's why they stand the test of time.
bookgirl18 : Well feeling better is a long ay off, but I hope you like this chapter!
Chapter XIV
S*S
When Wendy looked back on the day, years after it happened, she would tell herself that really, she should've seen it coming. Should've put the pieces together. It was laying right in front of her, like a broken jigsaw puzzle. With only a few missing blanks from having the whole image before her.
Blanks that should've filled in with the missed days, the quiet, his fascination with Pip. And the time when Johnny reached to the ground to pick up a dropped pencil, and the sleeve of his jacket had lifted enough that she could see a band of ugly purple stained around his wrist. And a matching one on his other.
She must've made some then, some little gasp or squeak no matter how small, cause her friend looked up, 'fore snatching up that pencil and returning his attention to the front of the class, determinedly staring ahead. She know her eyes were very wide at this point, that she could feel air stinging the around the edges of her eyeballs.
"What happened?" she whispered, careful not to get overheard by their classmates or teacher. The black of Johnny's eye sought out her out briefly, flickering, before offering a simple shrug.
"Nothin. Got in'a fight is all."
...Wendy had tilted her head, mouth pursed for about five seconds before nodding carefully and turning back to her own notes on class difference in 1830's England. But something in her had turned his answer over in her brain, the way she would when trying to sort out fact from fib in one of her brothers white lies. And...something in her decided that she didn't believe him. Sure, then been a few times in class where Johnny came in a little banged up -bruised face, spilt lip, even a black eye. And she'd bought his fight explanation because it made sense. The boys in Tulsa fought, she'd learned that during the summer, when Bob and the others guys sometimes picked the girls up sporting similar trophies. She wished they'd all be more careful, but that was liking asking the wind to stop blowing.
But...where in a fight would someone get the chance to get the chance to grab not one...but both his wrists? She could see someone blocking a punch, but that wouldn't do same damage all the way around, would it? And not to both of them.
Bedsides, she might not have ever seen Johnny fight, but she saw him nearly every day in the halls, moving silent as a cat and twice as nimble, like he'd been liquid in another life. For someone to get close enough to grab him, Johnny would've have to be standing still. And what sense did that make?
The pieces were all there, a one plus one equation. But for some reason she hadn't added up to two.
After sneaking a peak at Mr. Syme, she leaned over again.
"Johnny...we're friends, right? So you...you can tell me things, you know? I won't judge you."
She felt odd immediately after she said it. They were classmates, sure. Project partners without election. And he was awful nice with her. But did that actually make them friends?
The fuller way Johnny turned to look at her, the embers in his eyes lit soft-like, burning truth out of her. She shuffled in her seat. There was something so much older than either of them in those eyes. To her shame, she couldn't hold the gaze with her own. Though when Wendy looked up, he didn't seem to hold it against her.
"I know ya ain't gonna judge me, Wen," Johnny said finally, with an accepting nod. It was the first time he'd used her nickname, and despite the conversation, she couldn't help a bubbling sort of happiness from frothing up inside, shining through her eyes and her smile as she brighten. And got a answering smile in return.
"Miss Allen? Mr. Cade?"
They both jump, identical headlight eyes turning back to the front, where Mr. Syme was mildly peering over the rims of his glasses at them.
"Is there something you care to share with the class?" he asked them lightly. Wendy felt her face blaze up, all the way to her hair, but she knew Johnny wouldn't open his mouth unless he had too, so Wendy hastily shook her head. "No sir, we're sorry."
Next to her, Johnny nodded quietly, while avoiding the scowl Steve Randle was sending him way. Wendy just counted her blessing that Beth Mays was out sick today.
Mr. Syme raised an eyebrow. "Well, then, please keep your attention up front."
"Yes, sir," Wendy promised, before both she and Johnny did their best to become one with their seats. So they missed the glint in the eye and knowing pull of Mr. Syme's lips as he faced the chalkboard again.
Despite the embarrassment, that didn't stop the pair of them from packing up slowly when class was let out, wanting a minute before they left. Only problem was...there was no homework today, as for the life of her, Wendy didn't know what to talk about. So they just stood their, shuffling for a moment before what nerve they could claim fled them like a runaway turkey.
"Um...see you tomorrow?" Johnny blurted out, and Wendy hastily nodded her agreement as she scooped up her bag.
"Tomorrow," she consented, before taking the breath of an Olympic diver. "And...even if we're not...if there no homework...wanttodosomthingafterclass?"
The cramp sentence might as well be in Chinese for how much sense it made. But Johnny seem to have no trouble understanding her slurred speech. Only in believing it, his hand jumping to bangs, tugging them. "Ah...I..."
Just then the closed (or what they thought was closed) door threw itself open, in such a way that it scared ten years off both their lives; Wendy actually shrieking as she and Johnny whirled to face their intruder with the rusty sideburns and Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
He had a grin to skin an alligator, as he came over to them, sweeping off an imaginary top hat and dropping into a graceful bow; arm folded against his stomach before taking Wendy's hand in his much larger one. A closed eyed Steve Randle leaning against the door frame, holding his hand to his face and looking like he was asking God to kill him.
"Well darling, I'm sure I can speak for Johnnycakes here when I say he'd be deee-lighted to accompany a fair lady to whereveah she so desires," Two-Bit intoned grandly. "Isn't that right, Johnnycakes?"
He grinned over at his friend, who'd look as if he'd died and was waiting for someone to bury him.
"I'll take that as a yes," Two-Bit said, not missing a beat. Then he actually kissed Wendy's hand, before looping an arm around Johnny and leading his friend to the door, still grinning. "So we'll all meet here same time same place. You just bring ya-self in somthin' nice hon, and I'll take care of this fellow here. Then it off to wherever y'all want to go. So until then, so long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen annnd gazuntite."
With one last waving bow, Two-Bit put his unseen top hat back on his head, and lead his trio out the door. Wendy could hear him hooting as they went down the halls.
...She also realized that her hand was still up in the air, where the walking gray-eyed heart-attack had left it, and carefully brought it back to her side, blinking. Not knowing what else to do, she started home, the path known to her memory since the thinking portion of her brain was temporary out of order.
It was only when she was half-way home did the thought that she might accidently have her first date tomorrow stopped Wendy in her tracks.
S*S
Which left her doing something she hadn't done in more than two years. Inside the Allen's home, Wendy raised her close fist before the closed white door of Connie's bedroom, Elvis' So Lonely cooing out to her from inside her sister's self imposed tomb. A sure sign her daydreaming over some guy. Wendy had noticed her and Jack flirting in the halls, cutting their class to smirk and play Chinese's whispers. Well least they used to. Wendy hadn't seen that in a while now.
Which was probably why Con had checked into the Heartbreak hotel. Probably wasn't use to one of her guys playing her game on her level.
"Although it's always crowded you can still find some room...For broken hearted lovers to cry away the gloom..."
Wendy bit her lip, lowering her hand before raising it again. But before she could knock, it swung open, reveling Con in all her dropped eyelid, cocked hip glory.
"You been standing here for fifteen minutes, Wen," Connie droned out, a red sweater falling of her shoulder, almost sneering. Things...hadn't improved between them since the trip to Windrixville. "If ya gonna knock, knock. What do ya want, hon?"
"I get so lonely baby...I get so lonely baby..."
Well, now or never. She took a breath.
"I...I need your help, Con," she finally blurted, in a fast winded rush, the tortoise chasing the hare. And making her sister's eyebrow shoot up, up, to her curly hair. She looked the younger Allen up, and down, and back again. And Wendy jolted to realize she'd startled her good.
"I...don't think I heard that right," Connie said finally, holding the door ever so slightly more open. "Did the Blessed Virgin Wendy just say she needed a mere human's help?"
Wendy closed her eyes to shield herself from the blasphemy that flew her way, but that didn't stop it from hitting her ears.
"Mama would kill you if she'd heard you say that-"
"Mama's not here, Wendy," Connie snapped, with a harshness made them both jump, that seem to even take her by surprise. She stopped, gave a growling-sighed, and rubbed the space between her eyes before meeting Wendy's gaze again, contemplating. Squirming, Wendy laced her fingers together.
"...I real do need your help, Con," she said softly.
"I get so lonely I could die..."
"...With what?" Con asked.
Her face got red. "Um...I kinda...have a not-date tomorrow...and I don't know what to wear."
If Connie's face was incredulous before, she was absolutely uncomprehending now.
"...A date..."
"A not-date," Wendy corrected.
"You have a date..."
"Well...I don't know!" Wendy cried, arms flapping like a fledgling. "That's why I need help!"
"My God, we're in the end-times," Con muttered, more to herself than to Wendy. Then she stepped back and open the door wider.
"So if your baby leaves you, you got a tale to tell...Just take a walk down lonely street to heartbreak hotel..."
"Come in, hon."
S*S
"So...Blessed Virgin Wendy," Connie drawled, once Wendy had seated herself on the bed. She turned off Elvis. "Who's the lucky Joseph?"
She made a face, and resisted the urge to cross herself. "Could you stop with the Bible references? This is serious!"
Connie held up her hands. "Hey, I'm just happy to finally have some proof that your human like the rest of us...by the way, did an angel arrange the date, and blow the trumpets?"
An image of a haloed and bewinged Two-Bit Matthew, delicately stringing up a harp, tried to manifest itself in Wendy's mind -though that quickly got replaced with an image of the Greaser hitching up his shinny white gown to moon his friends from Heaven. The second one fit better.
"Um...not exactly." Connie waved it aside.
"So this boy," she drew out, walking the length of the room like a prosecutor. "On a scale of one to ten, how cute is he?"
Wendy blinked. "Huh?"
"Oh you heard me. One to ten. How cute?"
Wendy shuffled, then flush. She tried to think on a more objective sale rather than her personal one, tossing in Johnny's eyes, his grin, his bangs and taking away most girls would find him small, and avoid or mistake his quietness. "Um...7.5?"
Connie arched a brow, then hummed.
"So probably a 6.1 for me..."
"Hey!" Wendy cried, affronted -though for Johnny or her insulted taste, she wasn't sure.
"Hush it hon, you came to me, remember?"
"But what does that have to do with how I dress?!"
Con rolled her eyes. "So you'll know how much effort to put into it. If he's a doll, you'll want to put on your best. If not, you'll want your clothes to be a visual go-no-further sign."
"But shouldn't you put in an equal effort to look nice for everyone?"
Connie stopped walking, and stared into space a moment, lips twitching. "God you're square. That's not how it works, Wen. That's not how any of this works. No. You don't put in equal effort with everyone. Cause they sure as hell won't put equal effort into you. Even if you are the Virgin Wendy."
S*S
After a few more rounds of arguing and snipping, Connie eventually helped (in the loosest sense of the term) Wendy decide to wear a dark blue dress and black sweater -nothing to fancy, but some of the nicest casual things she owned.
"Blue's your color hon," Connie had decaled, in the closest thing she ever said to a compliment. "And the black will make your waist look like it doesn't belong to a twelve year old."
Or, so she started out. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Course, any hope Wendy had of this warming their relationship were effectively nipped in the bud with the remark, and the speed in which Con all but threw her out of the room; with the command for the Blessed Virgin Wendy to pray for her to the Lord our God...yeah, she wouldn't be letting that title go for a while, it looked like. Wendy would just have to live with it.
And yes, she would pray for her sister's soul cause it was clear she didn't, Wendy sniffed.
But all that was far from mind as she sat through her classes and English drew ever, ever nearer. By the time she shyly walked into the room, her thoughts were all but starwards...except for one thing.
Johnny wasn't there today, his seat empty of his blue jeaned shadow.
At first this didn't concren Wendy -there had been a few times when Johnny had come in late to class. Occasionally worse for wear. But there all the same.
But slowly the class started filling in. And Johnny wasn't there.
Mr. Syme's came in (and looked a long moment at Wendy's direction). And Johnny wasn't there.
Homework was given out at the end of class. And Johnny wasn't there.
And by that point, the niggle of nerves in her stomach had turned into a primordial knot of worry. No, not worry. Worry didn't do it justice. Something was wrong here. Just plain wrong. Wendy could feel it the gulf of her abdomen, in the same spot that connected her to Sam and Eric, the same spot that had dropped her grandmother Allen to the floor of her kitchen when her sons had been killed in the sands of Normandy.
That spot was burning in her, kicking agaisnt the inner skin of her stomach, as she absently mindedly strolled towards her locker. Only to stop as sharp voices echoed down the empty hallways.
"Christ, Johnny, why'd ya even come today?! Thought ya clean up a little first!"
"I did! But the damn bleedin' started again!"
"Shit, we gotta get 'im to Mrs. Curtis-"
Bleeding?
The word had barely registered when her friend came around the corner with Two-Bit and the also-absent Steve Randle on either side of him. They grinded to a halt when they saw her standing there, Randle letting out a low curse and Two-Bit for once looking wary. But Wendy didn't really see that, her eyes where locked onto the red globs that were pouring out of Johnny's nose like a broken hose.
And if she hadn't been so stunned, she would've found dark humor in how Johnny positioned his hand like he was trying to hid it.
"Wendy?" he tried to ask, though it came out funny. Cause the blood or not, she didn't know. "What are ya still doing here?"
"I was...what happened to you? Are you okay?"
In retrospect, it was a dumb question, an opinion Steve Randal shared.
"He look okay to you?" the other boy snapped, sneering -likely in an attempt to scare her. But oddly enough, something in the look was so like Connie's, that Wendy felt reactive steel come into her spine, and straighten her back, while she held his gaze.
"No he doesn't," she said flatly, before marching herself over, and sliding her fingers under Johnny's chin to examine him. She took no note of the startled tenseness that seeped into the flanking Greasers as they watched her with their friend. And how he let her touch him.
"We got to fix this this up," she muttered, and Steve snorted.
"Which is what we were gonna do," he retorted, glaring. "Why don't your just mind your own business? This don't concren your kind. You're a Soc."
...If Steve Randal confessed to being the tooth fairy, Wendy wouldn't have looked at him with more disbelief. What did that have to do with anything right now?!
"And you're a Greaser," she finally noted, for lack of anything else to say. Without further adieu, she took Johnny's hand and began to walk with him towards the nearest faculties. After a few steps Steve begun to say something uncomplimentary behind her when Two-Bit cut in -"Shut up man! Ya want'na make him walk all the way to the Curtis' when there someone here who wants to help?" And grumbling he subsided.
After receiving some wetted paper towels from the girls' room, Wendy went to business.
" Lean forward," she instructed gently, hand cradling his head into position as he obeyed. "If there's blood in your mouth, spit it out; don't swallow it. And hold the towel to where you fee the pressure."
"Ya seem to know ya stuff," Two-Bit commented from a few paces away, hands in his pockets. He looked much subdued from the self appointed matchmaker from hell he'd been yesterday. Like that was just a Russian nesting doll, and this was closer to his pure Self, in how both he and Steve didn't seem to want to leave Johnny alone with her.
It softened Wendy towards them both. "My brothers get these a lot, and my Mama was a nurse...so I picked up a few things...but what happened? Did you get in a fight?"
Steve snorted. "Oh yeah, his old man was in a real fighting mood-"
To be fair to him, he honestly didn't say it very loud. But he hadn't counted on how the sound would carry. And Wendy stilled before staring at him in disbelieving horror.
"Ah shit...Johnny man, I didn't mean to-" Steve started to say. Johnny, meanwhile had his eyes closed and his mouth pressed, before he opened them, looking embarrassed and more than a little annoyed.
"It's fine," he said, though his quiet tone suggested otherwise. "You guys can go, I'm alright, I know her."
Chastened, they obeyed, though somewhere down the hall, Wendy heard Two-Bit -"Ya a damn retard, ya know that?" -and couldn't find it within herself to disagree.
Johnny wouldn't look at her, gaze firmly locked on the dirty aluminum floor.
"...Your Dad did this to you?"
His mouth pulled and he sighed, before rolling a shoulder and giving a nod. And the simply acceptance she saw in his gaze was what made her own hand jump to cover her mouth, catching a horrible, pitiful sound. Johnny looked up and tensed to see her crying, hand grabbing his bangs.
"Ah, Wen don't...come on don't cry. It's not so bad, I'm use to it," Johnny said, sounding kinda desperate to make her stop. That just made her flood break even more, something that startled him when it shouldn't. Couldn't he see how much worse that made it?
She didn't remember taking the step, but next she knew, judging from his surprised ohmf, she was hugging him, as tight as she always wished someone would hug her, when things had gotten their absolute worst.
"You shouldn't be. That shouldn't be happening to you." She wasn't how much of that was audible, with her mouth in his shoulder, but it was the best she could do, before she lost her nerve and pulled away. And she saw from the way his arms were raised that he was about to hug her back. And she could've kicked herself for pulled away.
"...Thanks," he finally whispered. Then he took a breath and cleared his throat. "You...you should go home, Wendy. I'm fine."
She hesitated, but he gave her an encouraging nod. "Go on."
S*S
By the time Wendy got home, Sam and Eric were getting off the bus, and Con was just heading out to the car. But as they all met in the driveway, the other three stopped dead when they saw Wendy. The twins stared, and Connie's purse slide right off her shoulder to the pavement.
"The heck happened to you!?" she demanded, and Wendy jolted.
"Huh?"
Grumbling, Con snatched her purse from the ground and fished out a mirror. "There a reason you look like ya lose a boxing match?"
In the round reflective surface, Wendy saw her forehead, face and the front of her dress were speckled with Johnny's blood.
"Oh..." she raised her hands, touching them reverently before she snapped to herself. "A friend at school had a nose bleed...I helped him and got some on me is all."
Sam and Eric gave identical "ah's" and nodded knowingly, but Connie raised an eyebrow, after lowering her sunglasses. "Must've been some nose bleed."
"It was," she agreed, before pushing past them. "Excuse me...Imma wash up."
Reviews make me happy, so I hope you tell me what you think.
For all the deep seriousness of this chapter. my favorite part was Connie and Wendy's sence and Two-Bit playing the Wingman from hell. Hoped you enjoyed. And Mr. Syme totally ships Johnny and Wendy. On a more serious note, i feel like ive kicked up the theme of loneliness and motherhood.